


But I Know You're Alone

by Skerda



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Magnus's Backstory, Minor Character Death, implied childhood abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9426938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skerda/pseuds/Skerda
Summary: It's a night for telling horror stories. Magnus obliges the Shadowhunters with one of his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A oneshot written to celebrate the new season, and to expand a little on the glimpses that both the show and the books have given us into Magnus's painful past.

It was the sort of surreal, long night that lent itself well to telling horror stories. The shadows cast by the pillars on Magnus’s balcony stretched out across the carpeted floor, painting it in slabs of grey. The blue light of the moon was the only proper source of light, swallowing everything in a strange, watery glow. They hadn’t bothered switching the lamps on when they’d stumbled into the loft half an hour earlier; dawn was just an hour or two away, anyway.

Alec lay in one corner of the plush leather sofa, Magnus tucked snugly against his side. Izzy sat to his right, eyes closed and a small, satisfied smile on her face. She was leaning comfortably against Clary, their shoulders touching. Jace, the last of their small party, lay at the other end of the sofa with his legs stretched over the two girls. His head was tilted back at such a drunken angle that Alec couldn’t tell if he’d fallen asleep or was still in the land of the living, but he wasn’t snoring in the deafening way he usually did, so Alec thought he was probably still conscious.

Magnus made a soft sound against his neck, curling a little further into the seat cushion. “Is that the last one for tonight, then? And by that, I mean last story _and_ last drink. You have five minutes before Alec and I are going to bed.”

“Alec and I,” Alec murmured, amused. “Presumptuous.”

Magnus hummed, a low, almost-purr in the dark. “Yes. Alec and I.” Alec could hear the smirk in his voice.

A dramatic retching sound came from the other end of the sofa, indicating that Jace was, in fact, awake. “Ew. If I hear anything weird coming from your room tonight, I’m never coming back here again.”

Izzy huffed a laugh from beside Alec. “Wow, and that’s meant to be a _threat,_ Magnus. What do you think?”

“My dear, I think Alec and I are in for a long few hours.”

They laughed, relaxed; there was no malice in Jace’s teasing, and for all his boyfriend’s talk, Alec didn’t think he or Magnus would be able to muster the energy to so much as kiss each other goodnight when they finally got to bed. They’d been out all day, on one of those stupid group outings that Izzy insisted were great bonding exercises. They’d had breakfast at some hipster donut stand, then they’d wandered around the streets aimlessly, ducking into shops when something in the window display caught their attention. Alec didn’t think shopping was something he’d ever particularly enjoy, but he and Jace had put up with it amiably, because Magnus had promised them a good lunch somewhere if they carried everyone’s bags. The promised food was, as advertised, very good; the late dinner they’d had in the evening, even more so.

All in all, Alec thought, it had been one of the nicest days he’d had in a very long time. Of course it was always a nice day when he got to spend time with Magnus, but drifting around the city with his boyfriend and family was…yeah, it was nice. It was at times like this that he wished he were a little more eloquent.

He could certainly take lessons from Magnus in that department. When they’d finally decided to return to the loft, having decided that they were all too tired and too tipsy to make it back to the Institute in one piece, Jace had taken one look at the moonlight spilling eerily though the loft window and demanded a round of horror stories. To be fair, it was reasonably close to Hallowe’en, and as Shadowhunters, they had a pretty inexhaustible supply of material. Jace, Izzy and Clary had all taken a turn before Magnus took over, weaving stories with the deft skill of someone who’d been doing it back when storytelling was the only entertainment they had on long summer evenings.

The few times Alec could remember listening to scary stories in his childhood, they had been vastly _un_ -scary. It was hard to spook Shadowhunter children with stories about ghosts and demons, after all.

But Magnus’s stories? They were frightening.

As if picking up on his line of thought, Alec heard Clary heave a low sigh and then say, “Maybe one more story?”

Another thing about Magnus that Alec was just beginning to learn was that Clary could ask almost anything of the High Warlock of Brooklyn and have it granted. He suspected it was because Magnus looked at her and still saw the small, fiery girl he’d watched grow up at Jocelyn’s side. He was very fond of her.

“Hmmm,” Magnus hummed, voice muffled a little by the way his face was pressed against Alec’s neck. “I suppose I can manage one more.”

There was a long pause.

It stretched on for longer than Alec expected, leaving them sitting alone in the dark for a few minutes. The first tinge of red was just appearing on the horizon; it was a deep colour, almost like the sky was bleeding, or bruised. He shifted lower in his seat, pressing back against the warm leather at his back.

Finally, Magnus spoke, his voice a hushed murmur in the stillness of the room.

“Long ago, and in a land far away, there lived a young boy. His home was a great rainforest, with animals and birds of all kinds as his neighbours. He would wake up and hear birdcall in the mornings, feel the heat on his skin, and know that another long day under the sun and sky awaited him. His parents loved him very much, and he adored them in turn. He spent most of his time with his mother, helping her as she worked.

The family lived on a farm, and they worked quite happily together for many years. Sometimes the boy’s father would leave for a little while to travel to the nearest village or some other part of the country. He always returned in a few days, with a smile on his face and a present for his son: a special stone, or a sweet fruit, or a strip of coloured cloth. The family had very little money, you see, and when you have very little money, the smallest gifts seem like the greatest treasures.”

Jace snorted. “This is getting a bit Disney. I thought we were telling horror stories?” Alec heard a soft thump in the darkness as Clary or Izzy punched him for interrupting. Undeterred, Magnus continued as if Jace had never spoken. His voice was soft, almost wistful, Alec thought.

“One day, when the boy was still quite young, his parents began to treat him differently. They’d look at him and see something else, something that made their smiles twist and their expressions darken. Where before they had always been gentle with him, now their touch gradually became…harsher. Harder. They’d chase the boy from the room when they didn’t want to see him, and spend hours alone, discussing things the boy couldn’t understand. He’d be locked away sometimes, so they didn’t have to look at him. When they took him out, to the village or anywhere where he’d be seen by other people, they made him wear something to cover his face. A loose sack, sometimes, or a cloth covering his head and eyes. He’d stumble along behind them, lost in the dim world behind the mask. There were times when they made him wear it the whole day, because they couldn’t bear to look at him.”

Alec shifted uneasily against the cushion at his back, feeling an unusual line of tension in Magnus’s body next to his. The story wasn’t quite what he’d classify as a horror, but it was edging slowly into something much darker than the usual ghost or demon tales. Magnus would do this, sometimes: say something offhand, in that flippant way of his, that spoke of something far deeper beneath the surface, something neither he nor Alec seemed willing to touch. He waited, restless, for the rest of the story, certain that he did not want to hear much more of it and yet unable to explain why.

“The family spent months and months like this, caught in a strange world of hushed voices and fear. The boy was too young and too frightened to ask his parents why they had stopped loving him the way they used to: instead, he waited desperately for them to smile at him again and hug him and bring him presents. He thought there was nothing he wouldn’t do to have their lives return to normal. He couldn’t understand why things had changed so much, and what he was being blamed for. He began spending more and more time out of doors, under the trees. He’d sleep there at night, shaking, in the grass or near the river beside their home. Contact with his parents grew slowly more infrequent, until he often spent days at a time without seeing them or hearing their voices. Some part of him hoped that the distance would make them love him again; maybe when he returned, they would have forgotten what had made them treat their only son in such a strange, cold way.

Sometimes, when he lay in the warm grass at night and tried to go to sleep, he would hear his mother crying in the house, or catch a glimpse of her watching him in that frightened way he’d come to dread. Once, seeing her so distressed, he stood up and approached her, hoping, always hoping, that she’d open her arms and scoop him up and bring him back inside. Instead, his mother flinched when he moved, and screamed when he began to make his slow, careful way across the grass towards her. He froze and stood where he was, and they spent several minutes looking at each other. She was crying, loudly, and he was too. He’d spent so long in this terrible half-world, able to see and hear his mother but spurned every time he tried to reach her. He watched her crying, and she watched him, but neither of them made to move, until at last his mother turned her face away. Just before she turned, he caught a glimpse of the agonized, wide-eyed expression she wore. No longer was she the gentle, serene mother he had known; that woman had been replaced by a stranger, by someone he didn’t recognize. More than his father’s growing cruelty and increasingly harsher blows, that single moment with his mother hurt him. He knew, in a way he couldn’t explain, that she was lost to him forever, and he to her. He meant nothing to her now, and he’d spend the rest of his life in this ghastly half-world, wandering the land alone. She’d never smile at him again.

Weeks passed. The boy spent every waking moment of them alone, as he’d dreaded. He experienced the horror that is slow starvation; he ate what he could, but it wasn’t enough. When he sought out the people in the village, hoping to find help, he was spat at and thrown out. He entered the sort of hazy, uncaring state of mind a person feels when they’re near death: he hurt himself climbing rocks, or was bitten by the creatures of the forest, and felt nothing. He became weaker and weaker, until eventually he didn’t try leaving the grass beside his old home anymore. He would eat the grass sometimes, and take sips from the river water, but as time went on, he stopped caring about that, too.

He was deep into that fugue, on the verge of losing consciousness every time he blinked, when one day he noticed that the house was empty. The man and woman who lived there, who he remembered vaguely had once been his parents, had both gone out. Following some instinct he couldn’t name, the boy got to his feet, slowly, and made his way inside. There was food there, and water. He stared at it all for a while, swaying on his feet, as if unsure what to do with it. Eventually he sat down on the floor and took some water, gazing around at a place he’d thought he’d never see again. There was the mat he used to sleep on, opposite his mother’s. There was the small wooden stool his father would sit on, his son on his lap, and carve things from wood and stone. And there, the boy thought, hearing the familiar sound at last, was the noise of the old shed, creaking gently in the breeze. It was attached to the house, and he’d spent many hours there as a boy, helping his mother and father store things to keep them safe from the storms. It creaked, creaked, creaked…

He fell asleep to the sound.

When he woke again, and took some more water and a little food, he could still hear it. It echoed through the tiny building, slow and gentle. It was night time, and he was still alone in the house; his parents, for now he was beginning to remember that that was who they were, had not yet returned. There was only the darkness outside, the faint song of the birds, and the creak of the old wooden shed.

He spent hours on the floor, slumped against a wall. He watched idly as insects buzzed through the air, more than the usual amount, he thought. It was a sticky summer evening, and he drank and he drank until there was no water left in the bowl he’d found. After that, he lay peacefully, feeling at home for the first time in nearly a year. His parents would come home soon, he knew. His mother would smile at him, and his father would give him a stone, or a plum, or a strip of bright red cloth…

The insects, he thought. His mother hated the insects. They crawled into the house during the day and came alive at night, roaming the floor and the walls and the air above them as they slept.

He’d chase them out. He’d get them out of the house, so that when his mother came home, she’d be happy.

He gathered himself enough to stand up again, for the first time in what felt like days. His legs were so weak, his steps so faltering, that when he began to move he had to steady himself with a hand against the wall. Shuffling, he left the house and re-entered the grass-and-river world that existed outside. There was a cloud of flies hanging in front of him, and he swatted angrily at them, to no avail. They flew in a lazy way towards the shed door, and as he walked towards it, he could hear that creak, creak, creak, as it grew louder and stronger, until it sounded almost like the very timber was groaning…”

Magnus paused. Alec’s heart pounded, so strongly that he could feel it thumping, hard, at the side of his neck. Beside him, Izzy was also quiet, though he could hear her noisy breathing in the dim light. The first faint light of dawn was beginning to seep in through the window, painting the scene in faded hues of pink and gold. Somehow, the dispelling of the dark didn’t make him feel any more at ease. He turned his head slightly, for some reason unable to look at Magnus just yet, and caught Jace’s gaze. They stared at each other for a few seconds, something unreadable in Jace’s expression. Alec imagined that his was the same way.

They waited in silence for the conclusion of the story, a conclusion that Alec was now certain he did not want to hear. Something about the whole thing was beginning to feel off to him. Maybe it was the way Magnus spoke, at times softly, and then with a creeping edge to his voice, like he didn’t want to say the words. Maybe, he thought, it was also something to do with the way Magnus was sitting so tense next to him, muscles coiled so tightly that Alec had to fight the urge to ask him what was wrong. None of the other stories had made Magnus react that way, barely noticeable as the tension was…and this was a story that he himself was telling. Why would his own story frighten him?

Why would…

Alec’s thoughts screeched to a halt, just as he felt Magnus inhale next to him and begin to speak again.

“When the boy reached the shed, he pushed open the door…”

_Long ago, in a land far away…._

“And the first thing that hit him was the smell. It was a rotten, sweet sort of smell, decay and death made almost tangible on the air. The second thing that hit him, louder than it had ever been, was the creaking of the wood…”

_They made him wear something to cover his face. A loose sack, sometimes, or a cloth covering his head and eyes…_

“And it became clear to the boy that the breeze had not been its source, as he had assumed for hours, sitting alone in the darkness of the house with only the flies and the _creakimg_ for company. The third thing that hit him, when his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could see through the flies and the shadows, was the shape in the corner. It hung strangely, from an odd angle. It’s a sheet, he thought. It’s an old dress.

It was only when it rotated to face him, swaying with the sound of the creaking and the groaning of the beams above, that he recognised it for what it was. The woman’s teeth were bared in a death grimace, her last smile for him. She hung there, swaying, smiling…”

Another pause. This time, Alec felt Magnus loosen in his arms. The muscles in his shoulders eased, the tension leaving him suddenly. Alec waited for another minute and then, almost desperately, asked, “Is that it?”

Magnus sighed, a small sound in the growing light of the room. He tilted his head a little so that his chin was tucked into Alec’s collarbone.

“That’s it,” he confirmed. “For tonight.”

There was a chorus of released breaths around them as the others exhaled, winding down from the tense atmosphere with the same desperate relief Alec had felt. Izzy murmured something about getting a glass of water and then going to bed, standing to pull Clary with her into the kitchen. Jace sat in silence for another moment or two before following suit, beginning to head down the corridor where the guest rooms were located. Before he turned the corner, he threw one last, deliberate glance over his shoulder at Alec. He said nothing, but his eyes spoke volumes. Alec knew that the sudden, awful thought that had crossed his mind had also crossed his.

“Well, darling.” Magnus murmured, rising to his feet. He stood backlit against the dawn outside, looking, it seemed to Alec, almost angelic in the golden light. His beautiful feline eyes looked down at him so lovingly, and Alec’s throat grew inexplicably tight.

He cleared it softly, hoping Magnus wouldn’t see how close he was to tears. How close he was to asking, _Magnus, is that…Was that….?_

He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to know, oh, _Angel_ , he didn’t want to know…

“Time to go to bed?” Magnus asked, voice achingly gentle. He held out his hand to Alec, rings glinting silver and bright in the morning sun.

Alec reached out and took it. “Yeah,” he said, determined, suddenly, to hug Magnus until they both fell asleep. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed. Thanks for reading! :)


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